Steam is one of the top digitally distribution services for PC gamers, and soon players will be able to take Steam to the living room through the upcoming Steam Machines home consoles. It appears as though Valve, the company behind Steam, has chosen the right time to come to the home console market. Steam has set a new milestone for concurrent users with 7.6 million users using Steam at once.

The record was set on Dec. 29, according to the Steam Statistics page. The record was set at noon on Dec. 29, with the exact number of users reported as 7,678,758. This is huge news for Steam. Steam first surpassed 7 million concurrent users during Thanksgiving weekend. Before then, Steam had a high of over 6 million users using the service at once in 2012. There were 65 million Steam members in total as of Oct. 30, 2013.

Several critical games on Steam helped make this new record possible. The most popular game on Steam when the record was set was Defense of the Ancients 2, better known as DOTA 2. More than half a million people were playing the game at once on Steam when the record was set. DOTA2 has consistently been the biggest game on the service ever since the game was officially launched out of the beta phase.

Another big game that allowed Steam to set this new record is Left 4 Dead 2. This game was offered as a free download on Christmas Day; 75,000 users played the game when the new record was set.

Steam is also in the middle of the Steam Holiday Sale, which runs through Jan. 3, 2014. This sale offers many games on the service for huge discounts, so players have been checking everyday for the new deals of the day on the digital platform.

Valve must be thrilled with this news as it shows that more and more people are active on Steam when Valve is preparing the Steam machines for launch. While Valve is not making their own Steam Machine, many other companies are preparing new video game consoles that will transform Steam from a PC-only service into a console service. This will allow users to play their Steam games on a television set with a controller and could make Valve a major player just like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo in the video game landscape.